the long goodbye

It’s been a long time since I saw you. I think about you most days, I wish it wasn’t that way. We didn’t say goodbye did we ? Because I had to leave as I did, I have been saying goodbye ever since. Hours turning into days, days into all the years apart. Many times I have wanted to see you, to return and talk to you about what happened, but we both know why I can’t do that, even if you cannot admit it. I have called you, tried to wrestle the truth out of you about why I had to go. But in the end I may as well have tried to fly to the sun. The truth is not a place you will ever allow yourself to visit. So, the calls stopped a long time ago. We may have not been able to see each other, but then we did not talk either. It simply wasn’t safe for me to beat my head and soul against your wall of denial and try to come up in tact. I was left in the face of your dishonesty, broken and small again, wanting more, needing your love, standing there in the cold feeling invisible. I had to give up, accept the bare facts. You did not love me enough to protect me Mum, you stood by and let me be abused, you did nothing. You cared more about yourself than your own child. You were self serving, self protecting. I wasn’t even in the picture. I know this in my bones. I have felt the raw and ragged pain of this abandonment, blowing a hole through me as I relived it, to see the truth of you and my father. I know some people have said to me, but your mother was a victim , she couldn’t protect you . But this doesn’t stand does it ? I was a victim and I made the choice to protect Grace , my daughter. I gave up everything to keep her safe, as it should be. Choice, you had choice and you didn’t choose me. I have asked you this very question, why didn’t you protect me ? I know the answer now. I have lived the grief of it, over and over, so I know it, my grief is all that remains. I desperately wanted you to see me, to love me. I still do. Somewhere in me I still ask the question. It plays round in my mind like a washing machine spinning. Was there love there?

This question comes from a small place in me. A part so tiny and fragile, she remains this way always. Seeking an answer. I accept her question as remaining grief I have to bear. I hold her grief softly. I cannot erase her emotion, this small wondering girl who needed your love and protection so badly. We have many good memories too. It would be easier if we didn’t. All of this wondering and confusion I have lived with. Remembering laughing with you when we travelled. Crying over a sad song. Loving our animals, cooking good food together. Sharing stories of the books and poems we read. All of this and more. You, my mother who I loved so much, but you were not safe for me to stay with and not safe for my own child. So I had to leave you. At this time of year I often think of you and him, but today it has a different quality. The pain of yearning for it to be different has gone. There is no going back and I have accepted this. It is simply what I have to live with, but it makes the pain no easier to bear. What was real and what was not ? This feeling of love was it just me? I think so. It seems that grief has a quality to it of such intense love, I can be transported from my sadness to another place of peace. I just have to allow the tears to take me there.

So there is that carol you loved so much, In The Bleak Midwinter. At Christmas I hear it and think of you. This intense, loving, happy, yet sad time of year , when all emotion seems to peek and flow from me . The last verse of this carol is so moving. I remember you telling me about it when I was small. Telling me how much you loved it. Those words, what can I give him ? Give him my heart. You taught me about beautiful words and I cannot forget. I dream, I cry. I laugh and love so much with Grace, every day. The blessing of this family I have created is the reward for leaving you behind, to build and create this life I have full of love and laughter. Full of being able to be real, to be flawed and free with it. I grieve you as if you are dead, but still you live, I just will never see you again. You were a child like me who was abused. You suffered the generational curse of the family involvement in the tragedy of this truth. I somehow managed to be the one who got away, finally.

All these emotions and thoughts I really don’t want to share, but they are what remains of leaving an abusive family. For some reason I still feel some shame about these, I shouldn’t, but I do, so that makes me share them. At this time of year I know there are people out there like me who had to walk away to save themselves and their own children and they are hurting, but they are not alone. Walk away ? Some of us had to escape, it was so controlling. I know it sounds extreme , but the truth so often is. I think if I expose myself with these truths others will think , look at her, she doesn’t have a family who loves her , she’s all alone, ha ha ha . This is not the truth of my present life. It is the hidden feelings of that little girl, feeling different, feeling like an outcast. Because she was. So I share her hurt and tell her, you are here now, with me , with Grace and you are safe and loved . What can I give her when she feels like this? I give her my heart like the song says. I give her my heart.

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